


Afterlife

by orphan_account



Category: Avenged Sevenfold
Genre: Explicit Language, Implied Drug Abuse, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s years after Rev’s passing, but A7X is still reeling from the loss of their favorite brother. Told in Zacky’s POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eternal Rest

**Author's Note:**

> This is part 1 of a 3 part series I’ll call “The Afterlife Trilogy”. I decided to write this in Zacky’s POV because it felt easier for whatever reason. I guess I relate to him more 0?0 I don’t know. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and then go home and light candles for Rev.

“Save me –trapped in a vile world, where the end game’s all the same as any other. We’re only here to die. Save me –losing my only dream, I can use some guiding light, some place to go. If you hear me, let me know. If you hear me, let me know.” –Avenged Sevenfold, “Save Me”

 

Huntington Beach, California. December 28, 2014. Early Morning.  
Even now, I couldn’t believe that he was dead.  
Sure, it has been five years since that day I got the call from his wife, but that didn’t mean I believed it.  
The headstone I was staring at now didn’t prove a damn thing.  
It had been a closed-casket funeral, so maybe his body wasn’t even in there.  
They said that Jimmy had died from a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol. At least it wasn’t cocaine…  
It was a bitter irony: he had always said that he wanted to die before he had turned thirty. He had died at the age of twenty-eight.

“Dammit, Jimmy, why do you always have to be right?” I snarled at his tombstone before sinking to my knees.  
I was the only one here, but knew that others would get here sooner or later.  
I wanted to be gone before then.

“Everything’s gone to shit since you been gone. The band fell apart after Nightmare. I haven’t seen Johnny in two years, Matt won’t talk to me, and Brian hardly calls. Not to mention my wife left me,” I complained.  
I stare at the granite headstone with equally cold eyes.  
“Why did you have to leave us all behind?! Why did God grant you your wish?!” I yelled, though I knew it didn’t do me any good.

Huntington Beach, California. December 28, 2009. Late Afternoon.  
“Slow down, I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” I told Jimmy’s wife over my cell phone.  
Then she said the words I didn’t want to hear.  
“Jimmy’s dead.”  
I nearly dropped the fuckin’ phone.  
Johnny gave me a worried glance and I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. This couldn’t be real…  
“Chris?” Mrs. Sullivan asked me in a choked voice.  
“Do the others know?” I asked as tears stubbornly ran down me cheeks.  
“You’re the first one I called. You were the first number in the emergencies list,” she replied in a tear-filled gasp.  
“I’ll tell the others. You call his parents,” I told her before hanging up.  
I faced Johnny, who looked like a worried parent.  
“Who was it?” he asked cautiously.  
“Jimmy’s dead,” I whispered, hardly believing myself.  
Johnny froze.  
“I gotta call Brian and Matt,” I told him before getting up from the couch, taking my cell phone with me.  
“I’ll call Matt,” Johnny called out to me while I speed-dialled Brian.  
That’s when things started going to hell…

Present Day. 2014. Early Morning.  
“Nothing’s been the same without you, Jimmy! We’ve grown apart and argue nonstop! Hell, Johnny’s probably an alcoholic again and gone to fucking Toronto or some wasteland. Brian’s gone back to heroin and I don’t’ know where the fuck Matt is because he won’t have anything to do with us. He was the first one to leave and once he left, the band was done for completely,” I rambled.  
Lifting my head up, I looked around and saw that I was still alone.  
So, I continued, “I’m still fighting my urge to go back to cocaine, but it’s so hard when I have nothing to live for.”  
“Don’t give me that shit, Zacky,” a vaguely familiar voice range out.  
No one’s called me by my stage name in a long time…  
Snapping my head up, I looked around again, but saw that I was still alone.  
Had I imagined the voice?

“Over here, dumbass!” the voice called out from behind me.  
I shifted around and looked straight up to find a face I thought I’d never see again.  
“What’s up, Z.V.?” my old friend asked me with a goofy smile that I had missed.  
I stared open-mouthed as I stood up slowly, not believing my eyes.  
“Aren’t you gonna say hi to me?” he asked me.  
“C’mere, motherfucker!” I snapped at him as I pulled him into a hug.  
It was only when he hugged me back that I could finally believe that my eyes weren’t fucked up and that it was Rev in front of me.


	2. To End the Rapture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of 3 in “The Afterlife Trilogy”. I’m still tryin’ to figure out if Rev is a ghost in this story or not. XD I’m terrible.

“It seems we’re so invincible, but the truth is so cold. A final song, a last request. A perfect chapter laid to rest. Now and then I try to find a place in my mind where you can stay, you can stay awake forever.” –Avenged Sevenfold, “So Far Away”

Huntington Beach, California. December 28, 2014. Early Morning.

“I-I can’t believe it…you’re alive…or am I seeing a ghost?” I asked Jimmy as I held him out at arms-length.  
He smiled at me and said, “I’ll tell you later. I have a job to do first.”  
I furrowed my eyebrows and said, “Job?”  
“Yeah, I was sent to bring you guys back together. Like I said, when I come back, I’m bringing back Avenged Sevenfold,” he explained.  
I remembered how he had said that.  
I wiped my tears away and said, “Everything’s been hell since you left…”  
“Yeah, I heard what you said…so I really was what held the band together?” He looked nervous, but he knew the answer just like I did.  
“You truly were, Jimmy…you were our brother…” I was about to cry…again.  
“Don’t worry Zacky, me and you’ll fix this!” Jimmy said as he came to stand beside me and wrapped his left arm around my shoulders.  
Either I was hallucinating or this was a really elaborate dream, but I ran with it. What the hell, right?  
“Let’s do this,” I stated with a firm nod.  
“Who first?” Jimmy asked as we started walking towards my car.  
“Brian…he’s the only one I’m kinda on speaking terms with…”  
“Alright, does he still live in the same place?”  
“Last I heard, yeah.”  
“Then that’s where we’re going.”

Just outside Huntington Beach. Dec. 28, 2014. Late Morning.

I knocked on the door while Rev stayed in the car. We didn’t wanna scare Synyster too bad…yet.  
He opened the door after the tenth knock.  
I could tell that he was clean and sober…for now.  
“Hey, Zack…what’s up?”  
“I wanna talk to you,” I began, just like Jimmy told me.  
“Yeah, sure, what about?” Brain was being friendlier now than he had been in the past four years. Maybe being uninfluenced had something to do with it.  
“Can we…go inside?” I was nervous in asking him.  
He smiled and said, “Of course, c’mon in.”

We stepped inside after I gave Jimmy a look.  
Everything was going according to plan so far, and Jimmy’s plans never worked.  
“So, what is it you wanna talk to me about?” Brain asked as we sat on his sofa.  
I nervously bit my lip ring before replying, “Have you heard from Matt or Johnny lately?”  
Brain ran his fingers through his black hair and said, “Well…I haven’t heard from Matt since he left…and I ran into Johnny about three months ago…”  
“How was Johnny?”  
“We had drinks and he said he was still living in Orange County, but was only here to visit Jimmy’s grave.”  
“Did he hear from Matt?”  
“Nah, he said that he wouldn’t talk to ‘that fuckin’ pussy’. I just shrugged and said that it was Matt’s decision to leave, so we should just let him be…why do you suddenly wanna know here everybody’s at? I thought you didn’t wanna talk to anyone but me anymore.”  
“I want us to try and straighten our shit out. We’ve all said things to each other that we regret, but are too fucking stubborn to admit. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jimmy came back with knives and stab us all because we can’t get along without him.”  
Brian, the only one I didn’t spend all my time arguing with, raised his eyebrows at me.  
“It’s true, Rev held us all together. We’ve all been fucked since the day we git the call. I mean, Johnny’s gone back to alcohol, Matt shunned us, I went back to heroin, and you’re fighting cocaine again…Not to mention Mrs. Sullivan committed suicide and your wife left you.”  
Every word he spoke was the truth, but I felt horribly guilty because I knew Jimmy was eavesdropping by a window nearby. His wife had committed suicide…

“I still think you were the one that got fucked up the most, emotionally anyway. You were closer to Jimmy than the rest of us. You were the one that gave his eulogy and you were the one that got to say goodbye last.”  
Again, Synyster was telling the truth, the painful truth.  
“Do you wanna see if we can repair our fucked-up family?” I asked him.  
“I think it’s still worth as shot. The only problem is getting Johnny and Matt to eve talk to each other. The last time they saw each other, it resulted in glasses being thrown, punches connecting to bodies, and lots of blood pouring.”  
“Okay, then you find Johnny and talk to him…I’ll go find Matt.”  
“Hey, you gotta talk to Johnny too.”  
“I know, after I talk to Matt first.”  
“Good luck with that one. I have no fucking clue where he is.”  
“I’ll find him, trust me.”  
“I always have, Vengeance.”

Huntington Beach. Dec. 28, 2014. Early Afternoon.

Jimmy and I were my laptop in my house, searching for every Matt Sanders in the state.  
“There he is!” Jimmy pointed out excitedly, nearly tipping the laptop off my legs and onto the floor.  
“Sure as hell is,” I muttered under my breath.  
“You look worried. You alright?” It was still weird to a) be talking to Rev in the first place and 2) for Rev to be so…serious.  
I took a deep breath before replying, “I’m nervous about talking to Matt.”  
“You were nervous talking to Syn too,” Jimmy pointed out.  
“But Matt blames me for you…leaving,” I admitted. I didn’t wanna use any word that was associated with death.  
“Zacky, you can say that I had died, I totally accept that. Anyway, you know it’s not your fault that I had died. I was just being a dumbass and mixed pills with alcohol,” Jimmy explained with soft, understanding eyes.  
“But I feel guilty!” I cried out, which was outta character for me.  
My friend shook his head and pulled me into a hug. He still felt warm and solid to the touch and I wanted to stay like this for a while.   
Guess I was scared that as soon as I let him go, he would fade away…

“We can talk to Matt tomorrow if you want and then talk to Johnny the day after that. You alright with that?” He pulled away and I suddenly felt colder.  
I nodded before setting the laptop on the coffee table.  
Yawning, I shut off the laptop before sitting back on the couch.  
“You wanna go to sleep?” Jimmy asked me with a raised eyebrow.  
“If I go to sleep, will you still be here?” I asked with a pleading look in my dark eyes.  
Jimmy smiled at me and said, “Yeah, I’ll be a creepier and be right here when you wake up.”  
I laughed and laid down on my right side with my head close to the outside of his jean-covered left thigh.  
He ran his fingers through my hair before getting up to go into my bedroom.

Jimmy came back with a pillow and a blanket and covered me up.  
“No sense in being cold,” he told me as I lifted my head up so he could slide the pillow in.  
“What’re you gonna do while I sleep?” I asked before yawning.  
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know, I guess read…watch the news…listen to music…same shit I did when I was bored years ago.”  
“You haven’t changed at all, Rev,” I mumbled as I stared up at him.  
His smile was radiant as he said, “Neither have you, Zacky.”

Somewhere in America. November 17, 2005. Late Evening.

All five of us were drunk, especially Brian and Johnny.  
Matt was with his girlfriend and Johnny and Brian were with some roadies.  
Jimmy and I sat on a couch in the lounge area of our bus, watching SNL.  
Well, we weren’t really watching it. The T.V. was just providing background noise really.  
We were kinda-sorta sober at this point and felt too lazy to go grab the beers out of the fridge.  
So, we just talked about random shit.

“Have you ever been so drunk that you start hitting on guys that look like girls?” Jimmy asked me at one point.  
“You mean, like, transvestites?  
“No, I mean, girly looking guys. You know, pretty boys.”  
“Nah, I’ve never been that drunk. I’m guessing you have?”  
“Hells yeah I have!”  
“Are you that drunk now?”  
“I don’t know, do you consider yourself a pretty boy?”  
“I have been called one if that counts.”  
“Yeah it counts, ‘specially if it comes from me.”  
I smirked at him and said, “Do you think I’m pretty?”  
Jimmy looked at me seriously and said, “I think you’re hot and not just in a gay way either.”  
“What’s that suppose to mean?” I asked as I leaned slightly closer to him.  
“What gives a fuck what it means? Just get over here, pretty boy,” Jimmy snapped before physically dragging me closer to him.  
The next thing I knew, his lips were crushing against mine…and I was opening my mouth up to him.  
Truth be told, I both of us were straight as a pin and truth be told, we could be lying our asses off.

It was by far the hottest thing I had ever experienced and we only broke apart because we heard Brian and Johnny coming into the bus.  
Then when we sobered up, I told Jimmy that we couldn’t tell anyone about our kiss and he had agreed with me ‘100 percent’.   
I still think we were lying to everyone including ourselves on that one…


	3. The Wicked End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Rev will always live on in our hearts…wouldn’t surprise me if he’s teaching God how to play the drums or Jesus how to turn water into Guinness! XD

“Left this life to set me free, took a piece of you inside of me. All this hurt can finally fade, promise me you’ll never feel afraid…” –Avenged Sevenfold, “Fiction”

Huntington Beach. Dec. 28, 2014. Late Afternoon.

When I woke up, I found Jimmy petting my hair absently while flipping channels on my TV.  
I shifted to look up at him and whispered, “You’re still here...”  
He looked down at me and whispered back in a sweet tone, “Of course I am, I promised you I would.”  
My heart fluttered as I sat completely up and laid my head against his left shoulder.  
“Thank you,” I told him quietly.  
He nodded before asking, “What do you wanna do about Matt tomorrow?”  
I slumped my shoulders and replied, “I guess…go and talk to him…what more can I do?”  
“True, true.”

The next day.  
I was extremely nervous about going to confront Matt after all these years, but I knew it had to be done, according to Jimmy.  
Synyster was right behind me while Jimmy was hiding in the back floorboards of my car. I’m amazed Brian hadn’t noticed…

Matt opened on the fourth knock and actually looked surprised to see us.  
“Can we talk?” I asked.  
He crossed his arms and said, “What about?”  
“Well…Brian and I wanna try to get all of us on talking terms again…” I replied nervously.  
“Why?”  
“Because Jimmy would’ve wanted us to,” I said boldly while basically stating Jimmy’s “mission”.  
Matt narrowed his eyes at me and said, “It’s your fault he’s dead.”  
“How the fuck is it my fault that he accidentally combined pills and alcohol?! I wasn’t there when he did it, so how the fuck can you blame me?!” I yelled as tears flowed down my face.  
Matt scowled at me and said, “You’re pathetic…”  
“And you’re a fucking asshole to think that I would cause someone I love to die accidentally!” I cried as I grabbed onto the doorframe to keep myself from falling to my knees.  
Matt reeled back and said, “Did you just say you loved Jimmy?”  
Oh shit…did I…?  
When I didn’t answer him, Matt pointed at Brian and said, “I told you, didn’t I? I told you this shit would happen!”  
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snarled at him.  
Brian held me back and said, “He said one time that dating other members of the band would eventually fuck shit up.”  
“And it did, right Zacky? You developed feelings for Jimmy and he died.”  
“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I screamed as I lunged at Matt.  
Brian held me back and I struggled against him.  
“What the hell is going on?” I heard a voice from my left side.  
Turning my head, I saw Johnny with a confused look on his face.  
“Zacky had feelings for Jimmy and look what happened!” Matt told the former bass player.  
“So you’re blaming Zacky for Rev’s passing still? You’re such a fucking douche,” Johnny said with a shake of his head.  
“You little bitch!” Matt snarled as he started to lung for Johnny.  
Then, someone came in between them and we all stood still.  
“Stop you guys…please…” Jimmy said as he stood in between Johnny and Matt, a look of desperation clear on his face.  
We all stood still as if in freeze frame, except for me and Jimmy.  
“Is it true, Zacky?” he asked me directly.  
Everyone looked at me too, but all I could see was Jimmy.  
I hesitantly stepped forward and reached out with my left hand to touch the right side of his face.  
“It is true…” I whispered.

New Year’s Eve.

I sat on a bar stool in my house, anxiously waiting for the other guys to show.  
After our little fight, all of us made-up and started asking questions, but then Jimmy disappeared after that.  
I haven’t seen him since…

“Yo! Vengeance! You here buddy?” Brian called out to me as he and Johnny crashed into my living room, both of them carrying a six pack of beer.  
“Yeah asshole,” I laughed as I gave each of them bro-hugs before I sat back down.  
“Anybody else here?” Johnny asked as he took a seat beside me while Brian put the beer in the fridge.  
“No, just you two.”  
“Here I am motherfuckers!” Matt called out as he came in with two more six packs to put in the fridge.  
“Where’s Jimmy?” Brian whispered to me.  
I shook my head.  
“I don’t know…”

As the countdown began, I wandered off to tread along the beach just outside.  
The moon was barely a sliver, but there were enough streetlights to illuminate enough to let me see where I was going.  
I wanted to cry so badly, but I knew it would be pointless.  
“You really are dead…” I whimpered softly to the heavens.  
“The hell I am!” called out a voice from behind me.  
Turning swiftly around, I came in contact with Jimmy…it was like what happened a few days ago at the cemetery…  
I hugged him tightly and gasped, “I seriously thought you were a goner this time, you crazy fuck!”  
Jimmy chuckled softly and said, “I had to make a deal with God…”  
I pulled back and asked, “What kind of deal?”  
“Instead of going back to Heaven…I get to stay here with you…as your Guardian Angel…”  
I blinked rapidly in confusion.  
“Wha…?”  
“Don’t you get it Zacky? I want you too…” Jimmy whispered softly before flashing me a smile.  
I stared at him for a few seconds before leaning in to take what I always wanted: his lips against mine.  
“Happy New Year,” Rev whispered to me when we parted.  
“Hell yeah,” I whispered back before I leaned in to kiss him again just as I heard Matt, Brian, and Johnny yelling “Zero”.


End file.
